A recent development in wireless communication technology is the deployment of mobile broadcast television formatted for reception by mobile and handheld personal television receivers. To support the unique requirements of mobile television receivers, the broadcast wireless network typically employs a plurality of transmitters which transmit substantially the same signal at approximately the same time so that receiver devices may continuously receive the broadcast signal no matter where they are located within the broadcast coverage area. Broadcasting the same signal simultaneously from multiple transmitters positioned throughout a broadcast coverage area increases the likelihood that a receiver device moving through the broadcast area will always be able to receive the signals from at least one transmitter. However, multiple transmissions of the same signal from geographically dispersed transmitters can complicate the process by which receivers synchronize their reception and decoding circuitry with the broadcast signal. Since the signals from the various transmitters, as well as multipath signals reflected off of buildings and mountains, will arrive at slightly different times due to the different path length traveled by broadcast signals, receiver devices are configured to synchronize their signal sampling processes for improved reception quality and reduced noise.
For wireless communication systems, such as the MediaFLO® Forward Link Only (FLO) mobile broadcast television service, real-time and non-real-time communication services may be formatted onto forward transmission frames and distributed to various wireless devices within the wireless communication network. The forward transmission direction refers to communication from the wireless network infrastructure, for example, base stations or access nodes, to wireless devices, for example, mobile personal television receivers, mobile phones, etc. In one example, the transmission frames provide data slots for delivering information content (e.g., video, audio, news, data reports, etc.) to users within the wireless network. In addition, the transmission frames may also include a positioning pilot channel (PPC) to facilitate auxiliary functions for the benefit of the wireless devices, such as transmitter identification and mobile device position determination.